Carry on soccer coaching

You’ve put a lot of effort into coaching your team to use their passing and tackling skills and how to keep their positions in all their soccer drill sessions, then on match day it all falls apart. But don't give up, as losing matches happens to the best of us.

Never think about giving up

There are times as a youth soccer coach when, inevitably, we all think, “Should I pack it in?” Recently I watched my under 12 team warm up, then run onto the pitch. They were passing, stretching, joking with their team-mates. I was impressed. But then they lined up and straight from kick off they let a goal in.

I don’t think any of them actually moved. They were all looking around at each other, shrugging their shoulders. I was struck dumb. It’s hard when you’ve done all the mechanical work and the whistle blows but the car doesn’t start.

Keep coaching your passing game

At the start of this soccer (football) season I had just finished a spell with my under 11s in which we lost just four league games in three seasons. When I took over an under 15 team that had hardly ever won, I knew it would be hard to make them into match winners. Better players, yes, but match winners would be harder. And we have lost our first three matches so far.

Don’t get me wrong - we're not playing badly. The players have already begun to play a fast passing game. But we’ve lost our matches when we should have won.

Good company

So I did some research into the top soccer (football) managers in the world. And the news is reassuring as many of them lost a lot of games when they started out but carried on to become successful in their careers. So my soccer coaching tip is, don't give up! Coaching is difficult because your players are not robots. But remember the next win is always just around the corner!

Don't give up on coaching your team even when they're losing

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